Ancient Egypt

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Ancient Egypt One of the greatest and most enduring human civilizations established itself in the Nile Valley. Over thousands of years the Egyptians shaped their civilization and have portrayed their canonical nature within their art, literature, and architecture. The Egyptians adhered to their rules and their standards of belief and behavior in their daily lives. The artistic canon is well represented in Egyptian tomb paintings. For the Egyptians, art was made to serve a particular purpose, usually a religious one. Religious beliefs largely dictated what artists created, especially the paintings that filled Egyptian temples and tombs. Temples were decorated with paintings and filled with statues of gods and kings in the belief that doing this served the gods, showed devotion to the king, and maintained the order of the universe. The Egyptian belief in life after death was perhaps the most important part of their culture and probably helped to stabilize their society for so many centuries. The laws and rules of code the ancient Egyptian’s lived by daily also helped them to understand the seemingly ambiguous nature in The Tale of Sinuhe (1875 BC). The Egyptian pyramids were royal tombs for pharaohs. The Great Pyramid is considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The pyramids are said to have built Egypt by being the force that knit together the kingdom's economy. These building projects took a high degree of architectural and engineering skill, and the organization of a large workforce consisting of highly trained craftsmen and laborers. Ancient Egypt has captured the imagination of scholars and laymen alike because of the canonical nature which surrounds its art, its liter... ... middle of paper ... ...with the sun each day. When the sun set in the west, the royal spirits settled into their pyramid tombs to renew themselves. The Egyptians canonical nature was well represented in their art, literature, and clearly in the pyramids. The methods used to create the Egyptian tomb paintings as well as the messages embedded within them are excellent representations of the artistic canon in Egyptian life as well as Egyptian after-life. The seemingly ambiguous “Tale of Sinhue” may have been much less ambiguous to the ancient Egyptian civilizations due to their daily rules and codes to which they firmly abided by. The design and construction of the Great Pyramid clearly portray the canonical nature of the ancient Egyptians. The Ancient Egyptian civilization that inhabited the Nile Valley clearly adhered to their canonical nature in their daily lives.

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